Significant reflections

More than six years after its last visit to China, the National Orchestra of France will return to the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing in May as part of its Asian tour with a repertoire from French composers Maurice Ravel and Georges Bizet, together with Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky and orchestrated by Ravel, as well as works by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Conducted by Cristian Macelaru, the orchestra will be accompanied by Paris-born Chinese-Canadian pianist Bruce Xiaoyu Liu, who won the 18th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in 2021.

Renowned art institutions including the Musee d'Orsay and Centre Pompidou in Paris are joining Festival Croisements this year to showcase the quintessence of Impressionism, modernism and French contemporary art scenes in China.

More than 100 paintings and sculptures from over 50 artists, such as Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh, will be displayed in the exhibition The Paths of Modernity: Masterpieces from the Musee d'Orsay, Paris at Shanghai's Museum of Art Pudong from June to October.

Stephane Guegan, scientific adviser to the president of the Musee d'Orsay, says: "This project was born from the shared vision of the Musee d'Orsay and our Chinese partners to exhibit some of the Orsay's masterpieces without reducing their status.

"Even iconic works transcend their fame; they are part of a larger history. This history aligns with Orsay's ambitions at its opening: to offer visitors the opportunity to understand paintings and sculptures in their context of creation, linked to the political and social revolutions of the period from 1848 to 1914. The exhibition follows this logic and emphasizes the significance of the aesthetic and economic evolutions in the art world."

Seven masterpieces from the French museum's collection were exhibited at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. In 2020, Monet's iconic piece Impression, Sunrise was displayed in China for the first time.

Constance de Marliave, the museum's head of economic development, says that although the Orsay's presence in China is still modest, they have observed a growing interest in collaborative projects and the arrival of Chinese visitors. Since 2022, the number of Chinese visitors to the museum increased by over 5 percent.

She says this phenomenon reflects an expanding relationship that they're confident will continue to strengthen in the coming years, and they look forward to more partnerships and cultural projects to meet the growing demand.

From Tuesday to October 18,2026, the West Bund Museum in Shanghai and the Centre Pompidou will co-present The Reinvention of Landscape, which explores the various ways of representing the natural or urban environment in which human societies evolve.

Featuring paintings, installations, cinema and new media works from the French institution's collection, which have been created since 1905, the exhibition covers many artistic styles, such as Fauvism, Cubism, surrealism and abstract art, to trace the transformations of landscape as an artistic theme that now carries significant reflections on societal and environmental issues.

According to Christian Briend, the exhibition's curator and head curator of the Modern Art Collection at the Centre Pompidou, the exhibition includes some of the center's recent acquisitions never shown in Paris, as well as its collection of pieces by Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-Ki, Chinese artists Cui Jie and Qiu Xiaofei, as well as Chuang Che, who was born in Beijing in 1934, raised in Taiwan and lives in New York.